Yesterday (28 Mar) Bob Altman found a male "Oregon" Vesper Sparrow singing at the same site where we banded it last April, as part of an American Bird Conservancy study of this subspecies (proposed for listing under the Endangered Species Act).
This is our earliest "return" of a banded bird, by a couple of days. First detections of returning banded birds from previous years of this study have been on 31 Mar 2017, 2 Apr 2018, and 31 Mar 2019.
A banded bird from the small population that nests in the south Puget Sound region, being monitored by Gary Slater's group with the Center for Natural Lands Management, was photographed near Vacaville, California on 6-7 Mar and again on 15 Mar.
Please keep your eyes open for color-banded Vesper Sparrows if you're out in the field this spring. Normally banded birds will have a metal band and a colored plastic band on one leg, and two different colored bands on the other leg. For our local mid-Willamette Valley birds the metal band is always on the right leg, but some of the birds from Puget Sound or the Rogue Valley might have it on the left leg.
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Joel Geier
Camp Adair area north of Corvallis